


spare keys under worn out welcome mats

by guide_to_the_galaxy



Series: Lockdown [2]
Category: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Tragedy, catatonic donnie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-25 17:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30092280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guide_to_the_galaxy/pseuds/guide_to_the_galaxy
Summary: There’s grief and heartache in loss, but there’s stubborn hope and persistent love in its navigation.Sequel to Lockdown, in which the Hamato family comes to grips with tragedy.
Relationships: Donatello & Leonardo & Michelangelo & April O'Neil & Raphael (TMNT)
Series: Lockdown [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2215335
Comments: 23
Kudos: 62





	1. static from the analog screen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TurtleFlurple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleFlurple/gifts).



> I would once again like to thank Pili for making this possible like what a PHENOMENAL concept I am truly grateful to bring this to life.

Some time, days and days after they bring their brother home, much less than he was before- still endlessly loved and desperately missed- Leo just feels angry. 

He carries himself well, meditates and does Sarvangasana yoga to channel his sadness out of the little, tiny void that his brother’s absence leaves. He drinks green tea and writes the most abysmal comedy on strips of paper that he loses around the lair.

Now Leo’s hands get pruney from the bucket of water, small bubbles of soapy suds sticking to his fingertips as he pulls the rag out and wrings it. When he opens his eyes, dull ones bore back into him. It’s unfair; there should be life behind them, there should be a half asleep hazey stare with a spark too stubborn to flicker out. But there’s nothing, and it’s so unfair Leo could cry. 

Donnie never knew what to do when people cried. He’d get this super wry grimace to him, and his hands would hover like he’d have no idea what to do with them- so Leo would hate to cry now and make this awkward. He takes the back of his brother’s head to steady him, and wipes the rag across his face and neck, shoulders and arm, careful of the little slow-healing scar on his knuckle. 

And Leo swears he sees his brother roll his eyes, but that could be wishful thinking, a product of him trying way too hard to read between the lines of Donnie’s countenance. Because he just knows  _ something  _ sits behind those eyes; Donnie laughed a few days back, and Leo hasn’t let go of that sure fire determination to make his brother smile again. 

Dropping the rag in the bucket, Leo pats his brother’s face dry and laughs quietly to himself, unfolding a little crumbly paper from his hoodie pocket. “You...wanna hear something funny?” he asks, glancing up at Dee. 

Donnie stares down at Leo’s hands. 

“They’re not Mikey Approved yet, but dad laughed so...bear with me,” Leo clears his throat and eyeballs the piece of paper with his cursive a little too distorted to read at first. “Uh, okay so, what do you call a factory that makes okay products?... A satis _ factory.”  _

The room only gives way to silence, and Donnie’s eyes don’t move from where Leo’s hands are- neither do Leo’s eyes for that matter. He thumbs the torn, creased paper and chuckles dryly. 

“Yeah….” he sighs, and lifts his head, pocketing the piece of paper in his hoodie, “Needs work.” 

* * *

There’s a few saving graces for the Jitsu-Hamato family: April O’neil and Tuesday night television. April has an obsession with medical dramas like Pops does (like Donnie  _ did) _ , and she carves out time from her insanely busy schedule to hunker down with them and watch fiction people’s lives fall apart and come back together again in the timeslot of 45 minute airtime. 

Maybe it’s a silly thing to be so incredibly grateful for, but sometimes Leo can really just pretend they’re all normal, and that the reason why his brother stares at the T.V is because he’s simply captured by the rapid fire medical jargon. 

Donnie doesn’t do too much in their family’s health department; he’s a precise stitcher and has a steel trap mind that recollects all the steps of a traditional on the field treatment, and the pressure points of wide ranging anatomies in case he’s gotta paralyze someone. 

Mostly, though, Dee left the medical stuff up to Leo, teaching the latter to compartmentalize and prioritize and focus. 

Despite that, Donnie loved medical dramas, he was amused by them- intrigued and eager to learn a new thing. Though, really, Leo surmises it all of it boils down to the fact that his brother is incredibly melodramatic and chokes up at the climax of an episode- and that’s what he probably loved  _ most _ of all about these Tuesday night marathons. 

But now Donnie’s quiet, sitting beside April who consistently appears unfazed by Donnie’s catatonism. She puts popcorn in his mouth, and Donnie chews it; she mumbles her theories and mumbles her ‘oh my gosh’‘s to him as the plot unfolds, and rests her cheek on his shoulder. 

Leo scrolls through his phone, adjusting personalized headphones over his ear slits so no one hears what he’s listening to. 

It’s a podcast . He’s really fond of podcasts; the people are funny, their voices are calm- he’s ninety-nine percent certain he got most of his speech patterns from them- and they teach him how to interact with his brother. 

Mikey nudges him, probably making reference to a joke from the show, and Leo breathes a laugh through his nose despite not really knowing what it was he was supposed to be laughing at. 

“No- Leo,” Mikey’s voice cuts through the Podcast speakers filtering into Leo’s head, and Leo tugs his headphones off, staring at his younger brother who’s not staring back at him. 

Mikey’s hand stays on Leo’s shoulder but his gaze rests on Donnie. And, god, it’s there- that light, that little spark in the eyes, the small laughter lines falling into place. 

Leo whips his head from Donnie to where his eyes linger- to the television, a Hidden City news broadcast playing. Some Yokai excitedly appearing human with fancy little broaches, just another weird phenomenon of an alchemist city miles beneath New York. 

Leo trails his focus back to his brother whose smile sat so wide and eager, his hand gripping April’s and his eyes now set on Raph’s, who stays kneeling in front of him. 

It’s like Leo’s body works before his brain can process; he’s scurrying, tripping over his feet to get from this part of the den to the other, skidding on his knees beside Raph. He doesn’t hesitate despite better sense telling him to. He cups the side of Donnie’s face and Donnie recoils, snout scrunching up. 

Donnie cocks his head, eyes narrowing on Leo’s hands.

Leo’s heart is beating so hard in his chest, thudding under his carapace he thinks he’ll die. He doesn’t even care that his hands are slimy and cold that he probably really needs a shower but hasn’t found the time and that he probably just grossed Donnie out so bad right now. 

“Hey- hey, Leo- wait-” Raph rushes out, hushedly, but it’s too late- god, Leo’s been waiting to hug his brother and have him  _ know…  _ have Donnie know this is a hug and all the really corny feelings that come with it. 

He burrows his face into Donnie’s Jupiter Jim hoodie and waits for his brother to laugh awkwardly and stiffly pat his head like he always does. 

Leo doesn’t get to register Mikey’s pitched yelp before he feels teeth sink into his shoulder. 

* * *

“Told you to wait…”

Raph is not typically the guy to rub shit in. He usually takes his wins with a sort of mature grace that Leo’s still learning to master. Right  _ now,  _ he’d wish that Raph would remember his god-given talent for natural maturity and not sprinkle salt into this. 

Leo kicks his legs out back and forth on the exam table that’s gotten too small and too rickety for them over the years. Mikey gives him a lollipop but he bites into it too hard when Raph pours the peroxide, and so he’s left with no distractions as his older brother pulls the stitches through. 

“I don’t remember him biting  _ that  _ hard when we were kids,” he tries to joke, though only parts are jest; Donnie was a biter as a kid and still occasionally resorts to it when they try to steal his little god awful cans of sardines. 

“Yeah, well,” Raph talks around mostly gritted teeth, his focus precisely on not fucking up Leo’s shoulder worse than Dee’s teeth might’ve, “He’s not himself.”

“He  _ was-” _

_ “No,”  _ Raph chuckles dryly, cutting into Leo’s words, “He wasn’t. Not when he bit you and maybe not really even...before that. Ion know  _ what  _ happened.” 

He’s frustrated, but more importantly- and underneath every conceivable layer- Raph is scared. 

Leo cuts eyes across the tight spaced infirmary where Mikey stays surprisingly less hyperverbal than he typically ought to be in high stress situations. “Yeah well,” Leo says, tentatively, eyes still on Mikey, “Where there’s-”

“A will there’s a way,” Raph softly interjects, smoothing over the stitches with another layer of neosporin, “I know that, Leo.” 

And Leo snorts, “I was  _ gonna  _ say, ‘Where there’s life, there’s  _ hope’  _ but y’know tomayto tomahto. Nice stitchtwork- sure I don’t need a  _ rabies shot  _ or somethin’?”

It brings a soft smile to Raph’s face, a huffed laugh escaping through his nostrils. It sounds nice, it’s better than him glumly clinging to hope for the good of the order. Raph’s got so much on him sometimes, Leo doesn’t ever mind picking up a burden or two. 

He’ll hope enough for the two of them. He picks up some mail on his way to his room, sifting through some letters and Hidden City parking tickets. 

And down the hall, in a dimly lit bedroom, Donnie stares at a figure sleeping in a chair beside him. He sits up mechanically, breathing in the space, and his vision swims. But when he reaches out and touches the fur on the face, he feels no fear nor danger. 

He keeps his hand there for a long time, as the news on the television shows a robbed Best Buy, and surveillance footage of a person with a familiar purple hovercraft fleeing the scene.

It makes Donnie shoot up to his feet instinctively, but in the moment of realization the room spins on an axis, and his weight falls sideways to the floor. 


	2. ground control to major tom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all’s comments are really so nice and the kudos are absolutely lovely for a first chapter! I was gonna post this at midnight but because it got such a nice welcome, I’ll post earlier!

Donnie doesn’t expect to hit the floor with so much force, or for his reflexes to give out, wrist bending unnaturally at the collision. And the raw sound clawing its way out of his throat feels like it belongs to someone else, but he feels the ache in his own body. 

Something drops at his side and its wide eyes mirror Donnie’s own, fur hand brushing his face. He grasps at the air with his good arm, grasping for some grounding thing to tether him. And a hand meets his, an anchor that pulls all of Donnie’s attention.

The eyes he meets are the kind he thinks he knows, so kind and swimming with a brimming grief Donnie wants to understand. There’s something he should say, something Donnie tries to convey but he’s not so sure of himself and the floor is warm. He forgets why he fell, what he was trying to tell. Just that he felt so strange suddenly, and maybe that’s what these sad, familiar eyes should know.

The television flashes light across the room; Donnie reaches limply for the source, but two hands bring his arm back to its center. 

In some incomprehensible amount of time Donnie feels himself drift off, and with some steady breath against his face, he’s lifted, pried from the warmth beneath him and placed somewhere else. 

* * *

“Donnie….” there’s a few beats between the words, “Hey...Dee.”

The room’s mostly quiet, though the television is playing a movie marathon. He can’t see it; he can’t see much of anything. Except these eyes...staring into his. 

There’s this breeze in the room, three layers and somebody’s oversized sweater on him doesn’t chase away the little, biting chill, but it creates a weight that keeps Donnie tied to his place, deep into memory foam and padded pillows of assorted shapes and sizes- a frog pillow under his right shoulder that croaks when he’s leaning too much on that side. 

“C’mon….don’t let those eyes roll.”

There’s this thing- this sensation- like when a person drives to the Jersey Shore on a hot day, the first time of the summer season. The sensation of that first lingering wave hitting a toe, seeping under the feet. 

It’s like an electric shock of an awakening. 

Like sorting through papers so quick you cut your finger, or cooking so fast you burn your wrist passing over a hot pan’s handle. The hand that latches onto Donnie’s feels exactly like that. 

Donnie thinks he says something, or at least he intends to say it, but it’s muffled from a tiredness he can’t exactly shake. 

“Mm-hm,” the voice, less disembodied than before, laughs, quietly, “It’s me...April- who needs you to have some’a this soup. Splints’ orders...” 

The smell makes Donnie gag, he’s tired. Donnie actually remembers the first time he thought he was going to die; only fourteen and faced with the most horrendously vicious thing he’d ever seen. It feels exactly and nothing like that moment simultaneously. Fighting to get to the surface if his mind, and falling further from it every time. 

_ “Yeah _ , I lowkey thought, like, fish soup sounded kinda meh,  _ but  _ Mikey swears by it, so-”

It’s like his body moves on its own, without forethought or precision; Donnie feels his throat working, knows his mouth opens and closes over and over every time the spoon gets close- but he can’t get out. There’s this heavy sandbag on his chest and a ringing in his head- cold, like the fingers that rest on his temples. 

“The guys...and- and  _ me-  _ we...we miss you, Egghead,” the voice is warbly, and bittersweet, and it makes Donnie’s face grow hot, “But, Dee, I swear- like, like on  _ everything-  _ none of us are goin’ anywhere. We know you’re here-”

Head back into the pillows, body sinking into the mattress, Donnie simply watches dust fall from the ceiling, but he still feels this presence laying beside him, still talking but too hard for him to register and pick apart and make sense of it. 

But their hair smells like honey, and the beads from it makes a constant pinging against one another. And Donnie just listens to it, turning his head and looking through the dark at his best friend in this entire world. In the last place she should be, by his side. 

* * *

When he wakes there’s the soft sound of breathing at his right, and that same ceiling staring back down at him. He tries to move, and hisses at the static, cold pain that shoots up his arm. 

Donnie blinks languidly, and finds himself thinking it sort of smells like Sanpeijiru soup. And maybe there should be some significance to that, but Donnie simply can’t place it. 

The bed creaks when he sits up, using his good arm to hold his weight. And he’s so tired, and his head feels heavy and murky. Like he ought to know something beyond his own capability. 

Pushing to stand, the blanket softly falls back to the bed in a heap, and there’s someone who stays on the mattress undisturbed, mumbling words in sleep. Donnie almost laughs, he feels it in his chest, and the feeling is both natural and still so foreign. And the flashing of the television catches his attention again, playing a familiar footage- something he swears he knows. 

Then the screen- it switches back to some early morning soap opera, and Donnie simply walks on, gait slow and eyes still lingering on the screen as he pushes through the beaded curtains into the hall. 

There’s a quiet echo, water dripping from the pipes far above the den of his home, and Donnie is reminded of the rain, of the very most recent memory- clear, in his head- of him standing on Prospect and losing himself entirely. Perhaps that was just a night ago, but then there’s a stubborn fog lingering in his head that Donnie just can’t shake. And by either instinct or just coincidence, Donnie finds himself staring into a void of creations he should know. 

He leans heavily on the doorpost and digests this space; sensations, colors- super neon and blindingly overbright, namely, the flashing thing that reads ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ in his periphery. 

Donnie’s so captured by it, that it takes several blinks for his vision to compensate for the figure stuck absolutely frozen just an arm’s reach in front of him. 

Something is dropped to cut the silence but neither Donnie nor the figure move. It’s shoulders heave and looks like it’s holding his breath for a swim, like it’ll burst if it lets the breath out again.

And Donnie...doesn’t know  _ what he  _ looks like, only the blur of his own reflection in these familiar, impossibly overbright eyes. 

“C….” it’s attempt at words falters into something inaudible, hand stopping short of reaching out, face a weird blend of terrified and wild with hope, “Can you…understand me?”

The words reach his registry, but nothing in this space sorts itself out. 

He feels himself growing breathless, his hand twitching slightly as he holds the wrappings around his arm. And the thing closes the distance between them, and Donnie watches it tentatively unclench its fist, and rest a cool hand on Donnie’s shoulder. The words mean more than Donnie can comprehend, but he knows that there’s a relief building in his chest, and anguish and longing and this god awful persistent frustration that he can’t fully grasp why he feels this way. 

He falls into Mikey like a safety net. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always loved Donnie and April’s dynamic in Rise, as well as Donnie and Mikey’s. There’s something very vulnerable with both dynamics that I find very beautiful and I hope it came across that way in this chapter!!


	3. one small step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some pieces fall into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so happy to see comments and dms from people very curious about this fic and very invested!!!

The snow miles beneath them melts with the early spring rain, and Leo’s sweatshirt is drenched. 

“Remind me to stop scheduling stakeouts out on rainy ass Tuesday’s, man,” he mumbles loud enough for Raph to hear over the Manhattan traffic. 

“Hating rain is usually a Dee thing,” Raph laughs, lowering his binoculars, “Which is, like, what-? Ironic or somethin’ ‘cause ya both aquatic.” 

“‘M not  _ aquatic,”  _ Leo drawls, and pulls at the strings of his hoodie. 

“Bro, yeah- you are, look it up-”

“I’m  _ semi-  _ aquatic,  _ semi.  _ And all of that DNA got scrambled by dad’s ex-husband so-”

“Jesus, please don’t call Draxum that…” Raph groans, and shifts his weight from perching on the ledge to kneeling back on the rooftop, “He  _ wishes  _ he got that close to Pops, you ever seen the  _ letters  _ he sends?” 

Leo snickers, keeping his eyes downward on the streets below, “Who do you think always opens ‘em? Peeped one the other night actually, after, uh, Dee tried eating me.” 

Raph gawks for a millisecond, before his face falls deadpan, “That’s private stuff in there, you shouldn’t be lookin’ at Pop’s...love letters.” 

It’s a half-assed admonition; Raph is just as curious about the little penpal-ship between their father and Draxum, and he glances over at Leo like he’s hinting for more details. Because  _ Raph  _ knows that  _ Leo _ knows that as much as Raph pretends to be disinterested in gossip, he literally eats it up. 

God- when he first heard about Big Mama and Pops.

“It’s not all that interesting,” Leo throws out, looking over his shoulder at Raph’s ridiculously eager face, “They’re  _ the  _ most slowburn, awkward old people ever, but the letters- they’re mostly about Dee.” 

Leo hates the way the words suck the lighthearted tranquility they’ve got going on- that everything always circles back to some sort of calamity.

Raph doesn’t say anything, and he really doesn’t have to, but Leo sighs heavily and wipes at his beak. 

“Draxum thinks Donnie messed with alchemy- go figure. Maybe he...cast a weird magic spell or something like that,” he says, quietly, eyeing Raph and finding his brother poorly concealing disconcertment. 

Leo knows that look, and it pulls at his heartstrings all the same, “I was waiting on dad to bring it up,” he adds for good measure, “But...I don’t know, maybe he’s got a way to figure all of this out.” 

Raph rises to his feet, face set in a stubborn sort of stoniness, “Yeah, well we don’t need ‘im. And we ain’t lettin’ ‘im get to Donnie. We’ll work somethin’ else out.” 

To fight against Raph when he’s set on something isn’t an easy game, but it’s one Leo plays his hands at meticulously. Because he knows his brother, and he can be just as headstrong. 

“There’s not much he can...do. From a rinky dink Hidden City prison- but I don’t know, he’s the first person in months with a decent lead on this and-”

“He has a guess, a  _ guess- _ ”

Leo snorts, standing up fully on the apartment building ledge, “Which is, like, astronomically more than what we have right now- we’re out here chasing Purple  _ Dragon-” _

“Because they  _ have his tech-!” _ Raph laughs incredulously, “Leo, c’mon, I thought we were togetha on this, I mean-”

“We- Raph- we  _ are,”  _ Leo keeps his voice leveled and even, snagging up the duffle bag of stakeout gadgets and things he barely knows how to use. He wrings his hands around the straps and slowly begins pacing the rooftop, “But if all we’re doing is getting his tech back- we  _ have _ to try- at  _ least _ try, to get him back.” 

There’s a few beats of silence between the two of them, only the traffic and pelting rain filling the spaces where words fail to. 

Raph’s face is riddled with confliction and a grieving pain Leo wears a lot more discreetly than his brother. 

Leo stops pacing and Raph uncoils his clenched fist, sniffing up snot and a few stray frustrated tears, “The last time...the we tried we- we did  _ this-”  _ he gestures vaguely, at nothing particular but evermore clear that it’s this whole entire situation.

“We basically handed him over,  _ and  _ his tech and I’m...” Raph shakes his head, eyes downcast, “‘M not about to run inta that again- I can’t...I cant put him or us through it. If Draxum’s wrong- if he thinks he’s  _ right, _ and he...or- or we do somethin’ t’ Donnie thinking we can fix ‘im and we’re wrong-”

“Okay,” Leo cuts in, stepping to his brother, handing him the duffle bag to give his hands something better to do than claw up his palms from too tightened fists, “I get you...I got it.”

He pats his brother’s hand, relieved to see Raph give a meek, wry ghost of a smile, “Now you can channel that energy into some Clobbering Time, we got company, 3 o’clock.” 

From down below, the static of purple fiery electricity creates a luminescence bright enough to reflect off the buildings, an ATM exploding cash into the rain. 

Raph gives one curt nod, and Leo smirks as the adrenaline for the promise of a good fight claws up his spine. He brandishes his Ōdachi, and takes a leap, body twisting in the rush of the fall before he cuts through the air, diving into the phenomenon of electrifying bright blue. 

* * *

“So. April’s still knocked out, and the guys…The guys’ll be back. Lucky for boffa us- I totally overslept....” 

The faucet jets out water into the foamy bucket of soaking dishes, the force pushing up stray bubbles against the side of Mikey’s face as he quarter turns to his brother. He talks fast and off the cuff because if he doesn’t he’ll partially break down a little which would be wildly inconvenient. 

Donnie sits at the kitchen island, staring into the empty bowl on the countertop.

“We’re  _ tryna-  _ y’know, ‘cause of the...whole situation- we’re just tryna get your tech back,” Mikey breathes out a nervous chuckle, eyeing his brother, “I know-  _ you said  _ it was a dumb ass idea trusting Big Mama, and we….”

He stares at his trembling hands midway through scrubbing the pan, face softening for the briefest moment he relives all the many, many things he wishes he could change.

“But we’re  _ gonna _ fix it- promise. Cross my heart ‘n everything,” he tells Donnie with sure fire spirit, and means it with everything he’s got, a half anxious laugh puffing out from him. “We’ll fix it and then you can…tell us how to help.”

It sounds so backwards Mikey could scream; their brother needs them and they haven’t got a clue where to start. If they can start. They can get all his tech back, but that’s...not Donnie. Not the whole of him. Not even close. And god, when Donnie fell into Mikey he swore his brother was there, even for a moment. But there was still that emptiness to his eyes, this exhaustion that never seems to go away. 

Huffing all his feelings away momentarily, Mikey grips the edge of the sink to steady his hands before turning fully to Dee, crossing the small space where he stood to sit beside his brother. He drums on the counter top, and it rattles the empty bowl a little. Mikey finds the noise like some lifeline, filling the empty spaces where clarity and closure can’t, and he twiddles his thumbs until his thoughts can sort themselves out. 

When Mikey glances over, Donnie’s eyes are on him. There’s still...god, there’s something there- and with his glasses on, Mikey can pretend they’re just...here. Up late when battle high jitters still haven’t worn off, quietly keeping company beside each other. 

And so maybe Mikey can resort to familiarity in this. He tilts his head and asks his brother how he’s feeling. 

Donnie’s eyes shoot up, so much worth conveying in them. But when he opens his mouth, there’s nothing but a choked garbling, and he clamps his snout shut. 

Mikey’s mouth falls slightly agape, face framed with sadness as his gaze falls downward. 

He takes Donnie’s hand in his, and feels the slight twinge, a shift in his aura, in the spiritual plane they rarely touch. He feels his brother’s pain wash all over him. 

Eyes shutting, Donnie exhales shakily, face slowly dropping into his hands. 

Mikey’s face falls gently, lips pursing tightly in something pained. He reaches out to Donnie, but his brother flinches away like he’s been burned, something haunted falling over him, swimming in his eyes. 

They flicker over towards the entryway of the kitchen where April stands, one of Donnie’s baggy hoodies on and some pajamas, staring dolefully at Dee.

He stares slack jawed at her, something faintly exhausted etching into his expression, and eyes boring into Mikey’s wanly. 

And Mikey thinks he should call his brothers. 

* * *

“Mikey now is a- yeah a bad time. Raph’ll snagged you some gummy worms on the way home, we’re just finishing up.”

Leo presses the phone between his shoulder and temple, Kendra’s head under his foot and Raph ties off the other two Purple Dragons to his left. 

They didn’t have much of Donnie’s stuff on them, but the scrawny human kid blabbered on about how they bought the gear off of purple MILF in Hell’s Kitchen. And Raph knows maybe it brings nothing truly valuable, but the notion of having at least a piece of his brother back- it  _ means something.  _

As he rises to his feet, dragging the two Purple Dragon kids across the asphalt, Raph catches the way his brother’s expression bleakly turns downcast. 

“Yeah,” Leo says in an undertone, eyes flicking over to Raph’s, saying more with the gaze than words could, “We’re coming home.” 

* * *

They waste no time hopping out the little van. The Turtle Tank’s been out of commission since the Shredder came and turned things to shit, and the old hotwired van is loyal and trusty and gets them where they need to go. It brings Raph and Leo home to their family.

The duffle bag empties out loudly on Donnie’s lab table. Raph doesn’t have as much gentleness as he thinks he ought to, he doesn’t have the precision or even the full scope of understanding when it comes to the many, many miraculous things his brother’s made.

They fall out onto the tabletop and it feels entirely incomplete without Donnie here to over explain and meticulously walk them through all the mechanism because, even though he  _ knows  _ they’re never gonna fully conceptualize any of this- it’s all the more worth sharing. Raph misses it, misses his brother's voice and the glint in his eyes, rivaling the stars and universe with all the wonder held in them. 

It was nerdy and entertaining and now it’s just...things on a table.

Leo spreads everything out, sorting them in a way that’s almost reminiscent of Donnie’s compartmentalism, and Mikey talks rapid fire, buzzing around the lab on all cylinders. Leo nods over and over to every word, seemingly distracted by some other thought. 

“- think he understands us, like I swear, I felt...something, he’s just- stuck.”

“Yeah...we kinda got that part, Mikey,” Raph chuckles softly, bittersweetly, chuckling further at the deadpan look Mikey gives him. And he glances over at where Donnie sits, keeping his head down and looking like he’s fighting sleep. 

Whatever humor Raphael feels is drained the longer he watches Dee; they should be...getting him to bed, moving on- not this, not right now. 

But Raph’s too tired himself to protest, and Leo’s got this freakish looking oozequito in his hands that Raph oggles at skeptically. Mikey stops talking, leaning over Leo’s shoulders on his toes. 

“You guys copped that off the PDs?” he asks hushedly, like if he talked any louder it would shatter, “What’re they doin’ with ooze bugs…”

“It’s a dud,” Leo murmurs, turning the dead thing over in his hands, “I-I mean, it’s got...something in it- ‘s not ooze...” 

The oozequito is charred black all over, cracks spread along its back where purple ooze pulses underneath. Raph looks at it curiously, forehead furrowing under his mask. It’s nothing like the usual ones they’ve caught, and the longer Raph stares, the more this realization settles over him. 

He glances up from the oozequito to Leo, “You think any’a this could spark somethin’? Make ‘im come back?”

There’s a flash of something like an epiphany across Leo’s face, brief and momentary and gone in an instant, replaced by a quick break in eye contact and a sharp shake of his head, “I...it just looks familiar...”

“I mean, it’s his stuff- there’s gotta be something sentimental, like...” Mikey takes the oozequito out of Leo’s hand, a little less than careful as his eyes go wide, getting a fuller scope of the thing, “This is so trippy...holy shit, was Donnie just...lugging this around? I don’t even remember us giving this away...” 

“We didn’t,” Leo says, brow ridge furrowing, “I mean- not like that we didn’t- we…” he trails off, and pulls open Donnie’s drawers, rummaging through papers and blueprints and Poptart wrappers. 

“Nah, please tell me we ain’t dissecting this thing,” Raph mumbles, arms folded across his platron, and he makes sure to keep Donnie in his periphery despite half his attention being devoted to...whatever Leo’s doing.

Raph doesn’t do bugs and shit, least of all ones with mutating gook in them. 

Leo doesn’t confirm or deny the whole dissecting notion, but he yanks out a stack of papers, plopping them on Donnie’s lab table, and sifts through it until, there, at the bottom of the stack, is a diagram with stapled photographs- of Donnie and them all proudly cheesing with the bug, a Dora bandaid on Donnie’s knuckle and a matching one on Mikey’s cheek just because Mikey used bandaids like stickers and got jealous of Dee’s. 

But in the picture, beyond the bandaid humor and dorky smiles, is the same bug Mikey’s holding up by its bent wing. 

“Holy shit,” Leo murmurs, more to himself than Raph or Mikey, as he gathers up the papers and practically skids across the floor to kneel in front of Donnie before Raph can even reach out to pull him back by his hoodie. 

Donnie doesn’t react much to Leo in his space, or to Raph calling for Leo to wait. His gaze stays steadily straight ahead and not even the slightest hitch in his breath. He seems more lost than Raph remembers, or maybe it’s just the silence as Leo rustles the papers and holds them up, adjusting Donnie’s glasses as if it’ll really make a difference. 

And Raph thinks, as he crosses the lab to stand behind Leo, that maybe this is pointless, maybe this is a twisting the knife sort of thing; maybe they’re just making this harder and harder and more painful than it has to be. 

“Donnie, Donnie- Dee, I need you to just...just- blink, or nod or- do something if you know what these are-” Leo’s voice trembles, his arms all the same as he holds the papers and stapled on photographs up to their brother. 

Mikey’s beside him, peering into Donnie, a hand on Leo’s shell as their brother flips through the scribbled notes, eyes wildly scanning the pages. 

“I-I remember...us- you had us workin’ on this with you and I can’t make sense of this without you so, just tell me you remember what these are-”

And if not for his curiosity, and maybe this undying, stubborn desire to be  _ wrong _ , Raph’d tell his brother to stop. But Donnie tilts his head slightly, and Raph is suddenly fourteen and impossibly idealistic and naively hopeful. 

Leo’s beak twitches upward, something like a breathless smile etching onto his face as he nods, “Okay- okay, getting somewhere. Here-” he points to the diagram drawn out, and Donnie’s chicken scratch handwriting right next to it, “You wrote uh, a lot on here.... Is- is anything familiar?”

Raph watches Donnie closely, close enough to notice the way his brother stares at the oozequito with the most haunted expression- empty and still so disturbed. 

“Maybe he’ll recognize somethin’ else,” Mikey says just above a whisper, leaning so heavily against Leo’s shell it looks like he’ll topple over, “Maybe we can-”

“Ion think this is a good idea,” Raph interjects slowly, his eyes never leaving Donnie’s.

“He reacted,” Leo pushes past Raph’s statement, arms never dropping from in front of Donnie’s face. 

“He’s gettin’ upset-” 

“Just-” Leo huffs in something strained and warbly, dropping his head, and never finishes what he was saying. Mikey leans back away from him, slightly, and lowers fully to his knees beside Leo- and Raph only slightly pretends he doesn’t know why his brother is so persistent; if he thinks about it long enough, it’ll hurt an awful lot more. Leo’s guilt and stubborn hope manifests differently in a way that doesn’t quit. 

There’s a low hiss in Donnie’s throat. He cowers, trying to move himself backwards across the floor but only sliding back half an inch, arms trembling as he holds himself up. Donnie shouldn’t use his bad arm, his wounds haven’t healed like they used to, like the one on his hand, which is so stupid and so unfair and just one other reminder that he isn’t the same. 

Raph stops himself from reaching out, not sure if he should go on instinct, on his second nature and grab his brother and hold him steady. 

But there’s Mikey, always the outliner, with probably the most ingenious, dumbass idea. Because if all of this are just...pieces of Donnie’s memory, then maybe he just needs a way to bring them to the surface, Mikey thinks. 

There’s a time where Mikey felt it impossible to connect to his family in any way that transcended this plane of existence. And then Mikey enters his father’s mindscape outside of his own body, and he isn’t so doubtful anymore. 

So he reaches out and presses against Donnie’s temples before Raph has the chance to yank him back. And at the connection their eyes instantaneously glow white. 

Mikey feels a hundred things at once and then absolutely nothing at all. 

* * *

_ It’s cold and so void and desolate. Mikey feels so much it’s almost like he’s suspended in nothingness. He doesn’t know anything other than the present, and sees nothing but a sea of empty white space.  _

_ He’s on Prospect Street next. The rain is slick and the clouds move fast, the streetlamps creating dim orange on stone and gravel.  _

_ He’s taller, leaner, and stares down the street with no true registration of what he sees. Only that he feels layers of himself peeling, distorted, and the stinging of broken skin on his knuckle. It’s barely scabbed over, the flesh underneath it hot and rubbery.  _

_ It feels like something drilling deep in Mikey’s bones, but he can’t pull his thoughts together. He looks down into a puddle, and the raindrops distort a reflection Mikey does not recognize- _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooop! Mind melding is a very cool tehe. This chapter was probably the most fun to write and I’m really excited for you guys to get more later this week! 
> 
> I really love Raph and Leo’s dynamic in Rise. They have vastly different ways of handling situations, but can communicate in a way that isn’t so toxic like other incarnations. I also love the idea of them sort of co-leading, with Leo making more of the tactical decisions.

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t forget to leave kudos or reviews aaaa hopefully y’all love it as much as I do!


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